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Posts tagged ‘1881’

What does time whisper, youth gay and light,
While thinning thy locks, silken and bright,
While paling thy soft cheek’s roseate dye,
Dimming the light of thy flashing eye,
Stealing thy bloom and freshness away –
Is he not hinting at death – decay?

Man, in the wane of thy stately prime,
Hear’st thou the silent warnings of Time?
Look at thy brow ploughed by anxious care,
The silver hue of thy once dark hair; –
What boot thine honors, thy treasures bright,
When Time tells of coming gloom and night?

O! what a weary world were ours
With that thought to cloud our brightest hours,
Did we not know that beyond the skies
A land of beauty and promise ties,
Where peaceful and blessed we will love – adore –
When Time itself shall be no more!

Autumn was cold in Plymouth town;
The wind ran round the shore,
Now softly passing up and down,
Now wild and fierce and fleet,
Wavering overhead,
Moaning in the narrow street
As one beside the dead.

The leaves of wrinkled gold and brown
Fluttered here and there,
But not quite heedless where;
For as in hood and sad-hued gown
The Rose of Plymouth took the air.
They whirled, and whirled, and fell to rest
Upon her gentle breast,
Then on the happy earth her foot had pressed.

Autumn is wild in Plymouth town,
Barren and bleak and cold,
And still the dead leaves flutter down
As the years grow old.
And still–forever gravely fair–
Beneath their fitful whirl,
New England’s sweetest girl,
Rose Standish, takes the air.

It must be sweet, O thou, my dead, to lie
With hands that folded are from every task
Sealed with the seal of the great mystery —
The lips that nothing answer, nothing ask.
The life – long struggle ended; ended quite
The weariness of patience, and of pain;
And the eyes closed to open not again
On desolate dawn or dreariness of night.
It must be sweet to slumber and forget;
To have the poor tired heart so still at last:
Done with all yearning, done with all regret,
Doubt, fear, hope, sorrow, all forever past:
Past all the hours, or slow of wing or fleet—
It must be sweet, it must be very sweet!

When I beheld thy blue eye shine
Through the bright drop that Pity drew,
I saw beneath those tears of thine
A blue-eyed violet bathed in dew.

The violet ever scents the gale,
Its hues adorn the fairest wreath;
But sweetest through a dewy veil
Its colours glow, its odours breathe.

And thus thy charms in brightness rise:
When Wit and Pleasure round thee play;
When Mirth sits smiling in thine eyes,
Who but admires their sprightly ray?
But when through Pity’s flood they gleam,
Who but must love their softened beam?

I see the landscape tremble in the heat,
I hear the murmur of the rustling trees;
I close my eyes, and to myself I seem
As one who floats ‘mid odorous Indian seas.
Scarce draw the sails in the dull opiate air;
Scarce stirs the breeze the opalescent calm;
Upon the sleeping islands that we pass,
Scarce move the fringes of the shadowy palm.
And, as I sail, I seem to hear the voice
Of one who reads some drowsy Eastern tale,
Telling of men untouched of all the ills
Which for our hands and for our hearts prevail;
Ay, to be living in those days I seem.
And in those days still dreaming that I dream.